Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Fascinating stuff. From a purely political perspective, I wish him the best of luck. I hope he is wildly successful and in a couple years is considered a major leader of the libertarian movement. There's a lot that's truly rotten about libertarianism and conservatism, despite the fact that there is also a lot that's not rotten. American liberalism - the left of the classical liberal tradition - has been caught in what I think is an unfortunate struggle with the American right. It's unfortunate because the tendency to pose as the opposite of your ideological opponent has unfortunately lead to the left downplaying important elements of the classical liberal tradition and allying with democratic socialists (or I suppose social democrats?) more than they really ought to.

If a Glenn Beck/Tea Party libertarian movement fractured the American right into two camps - a conservative camp and a bastardized libertarian camp - it could give some real electoral strength to American liberalism so that it would have to rely far less on its leftist base for success (fleeing Republican moderates will help with that). Remember, we are not a parliamentary system. Monolithic parties win, and it is dangerous to have a party fracture like this. This will also humiliate and weaken the true anarcho-capitalist libertarians that are arguably more intellectually coherent but - like a true blue Marxist - also more problematic for their coherence because of the fundamental problems with their ideology.

I don't really think about the world in a political or ideological way in most cases. Usually I take the ideological landscape as given, recognize about where I fall in it, but don't take that to imply any obligaiton on my part to follow any particular party line. But this little bit of news interested me, and thinking more intently on it I'm a lot less scared of the Tea Party elements than I used to be. In the long run, if this does lead to a fracturing of the broken and really reprehensible shell of the Republican Party, this could be a very good thing for the United States.

18 comments:

I just wish it wasn't Glenn Beck trying to do this. I have a lot of Burkean conservative and classical liberal tendencies myself, but this is going to make the movement look stupid to me and undermine its credibility, even though I can already tell it's already really divided up into categories like "left-libertarianism," "right-libertarianism," Cato Institute Koch Brothers libertarian, etc. Based on what I've observed, I don't believe there's a clear objective uniting all the groups together.

I'm hoping there will be more Chuck Hagel types changing the Republican Party though. I've been predicting that there might be another split within that party itself and that there may be a party formation. It's very obvious that the GOP is and has been dying for many years now and there's no way they will be able to sustain this for much longer. Personally, I detest both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements. Both are too extreme for me to take seriously. Good post, sir!

As for Glenn Beck, leave libertarianism to saner people like Penn Jillette, who have obviously done the movement far more justice and not trying to force his beliefs on other people. Please. You're almost as bad as Alex Jones and the kind of paranoia he displayed on Piers Morgan's show last night.

re: "this is going to make the movement look stupid to me and undermine its credibility"

Precisely. That's what I like about it. But it will also expand the group of people who call themselves "libertarianism", which could potentially fracture the American right, which would be very, very good.

Not so my side can look better by comparison per se - because it would have electoral consequences. If the right fractures and the Republican party went into serious decline as a result, the Democratic party would actually probably be less reliant on the far left, and we'd have better governance than this gridlock with this Republican party and this Democratic party. That's the whole point, not that my side would "look better".

And the minarchists who are similarly intellectually coherent in a way that Beck often isn't.

No offense intended, of course. I like many of you guys. But there are problems with anarcho-capitalism and minarchism, and the Beck announcement made me realize that a big-tent bastardized libertarianism that fractures the Republican party could be very good for American political economy. I know many of you won't like it all that much, but as I point out in the next post it's probably not as bad as you all think. Even if it's a messy platform it's a much bigger platform for your ideas. You're already the grumpy dissenters in a political system where you have no chance of serious power. Why not be the grumpy dissenters in a bastardized libertarian party where you at least have some chance of getting something done?

It is always the fantasy of some Democrats and Republicans that they're on the cusp of the devolution of one or the other party (think the collapse of the Whigs here) and thus of generational domination of American politics. Nothing new about this idea. And of course the great schism of the other party never seems to materialize.

I suppose it's hard to contest such vague language as "always the fantasy of some", but if you think this is a "fantasy" I don't think you're being serious. We know the bases of success for the modern Democratic and Republican parties, several of the component groups of the Republican party are showing serious friction with each other, and there are clear demographical obstacles to the party as well. Plus the numbers seem to suggest that current majorities are to a large extent artificially maintained by districting.

These things do materialize throughout history. That's the whole point. Sometimes there's an actual schism, other times there's a dramatic decline. I think we are definitely in store for a decline. I'm speculating on a more schismatic mechanism (and I'm up front that this is speculation).

I think you're making a mistake in thinking about this as fantasy. These things happen and there's good reasons why talking about it now makes a lot more sense than talking about it - say - 20 years ago.

Now do you have any actual arguments about why these stressors to the party aren't worth talking about?

If not, it's hard to see your point because clearly this has happened many times in history and in all likelihood is going to happen many times in the future. My view is that since the rise of the Tea Party and that whole dynamic the likelihood of it happening has gone up.

Where is the problem with this assessment?

Care to actually make the argument or are we going to just keep hearing claims of fantasy from you? Because I'm personally more interested in the argument and not very interested in much else.

Also, the past is really prologue here. Major party collapses in the U.S. have been the result of rancorous sectional differences - think of the desire of New Englanders to secede from the 1790s onward and the like. There are no coherent sectional differences in the U.S. that are anything like what was experienced in the past and it is hard to imagine an election where you have a Southern Democratic or Republican party contesting an election against a Norther Republican or Democratic party as was the case in 1860.

Hmmm... but the rise, fall, and realignment of the Rs and Ds in the twentieth century have had a lot less to do with sectionalism and in the case of the Democrats under Roosevelt, they rose and maintained themselves for quite a while despite a lot of sectional differences.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Sectionalism is one potential mechanism for fluctuation in party power, but it hardly seems to be the essential factor.

I for one am glad it's not a real factor in this cycle. For a time a lot of people were saying it was, with the Republicans as a regional party. Obama's progress in much of the South has been very promising, IMO.

But the Republicans never split and they survived as a party. In fact, the narrative really isn't that simple; Republicans allied with conservative Democrats on as many occasions as not to block legislation that Democratic President's wanted well into the 1960s. Indeed, the period from 1937-1963 is often described as the "Reign of the Conservative Coalition" for that very reason. So there isn't as much historical weight there as many think that there is.

I don't see any reason to see Obama's electoral success as a broad indicator of politics generally (anymore than Bush's electoral success in the 2000s was). I think we're basically waiting in vain for any sort of re-alignment because of the general weakness of the party system in comparison to past eras of politics. In order to have a dominant political party you have to have a strong party system and that longer exists in the U.S.

I think you are attaching far too much significance to a split on an organizational chart.

The Republican Party is factioning right now with the Tea Party. Where that is going to go is of course an open question. And we've seen many cases of splitting and factioning and reorganization of the parties without a change in the official organization chart. I'm not sure you're understanding what my claim is here.

re: "I don't see any reason to see Obama's electoral success as a broad indicator of politics generally (anymore than Bush's electoral success in the 2000s was)."

The reason is the demographic inertia that says something about what the South will do in the future and how that's different from how it did in the past.

Arguably, if there is fracturing along conservative/libertarian lines the Republican Party in the South will probably be the least damaged by that.

That's really the only sort of split that matters when you count up the votes in the Congress or you look at Presidential races - that would also be the case with a three or more party system. That is how the elected representatives organize themselves.

I don't see any real evidence that the Tea Party will do anything other than mostly (85% - 90%?) vote for Republicans in future elections. Now if the Tea Party had started their own party that would be a different matter, but wisely they did not. But their energy has waned and continues to do so and energy is everything in politics.

The demographic inertia really didn't apply much in any way to Congressional races. Just like every other President seeking a second term since basically Nixon Obama chose to make the Presidential election entirely about his prospects and ignored any party building in other races in the process (in fact, that is a good example of the weakness of American party structure right now - a weakness that applies to both major parties). Besides, every day Obama is in office at this point is closer to the end of his Presidency - that means his power is on the descent, not the ascent (always true of second terms for Presidents in the modern era).

When a Republican is elected President in 2016 or 2020 I'll hear similar sounds from Republicans.

Anyway, I've written enough on the subject. In 2014 with no Republican break-up in sight you'll see what I am talking about.

re: "That's really the only sort of split that matters when you count up the votes in the Congress or you look at Presidential races - that would also be the case with a three or more party system. That is how the elected representatives organize themselves."

Right, but you don't need the end of the Republican Party. You need perhaps a libertarian or Tea Party splitting ballots. You seem think I'm predicting the end of the Republican Party. Even without that, a fracturing of the party internally that weakens it can also have important implications for Democratic electoral success.

re: "But their energy has waned and continues to do so and energy is everything in politics."

Which is precisely the point about Glenn Beck. Look at the outrage over Boehner right now. I'm not convinced the energy will be waning, and that's my whole point.